Posted on 08/22/2013 6:49:03 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
I’ve met a lot of people and learned a lot while traveling Europe the past several weeks. Of all the things I have had to explain to fellow travels as not only an American – but a Texan – by far the most frustrating thing is our stubborn refusal to embrace the metric system. I can confidently argue the finer points of how the use of y’all and the plural form all y’all are descriptive and have a place in the American lexicon. I take pleasure in explaining the intricacies of chicken fried foods.
But the metric system is another matter. “I don’t understand why y’all don’t use the metric system” is something I’ve heard too often. I don’t argue with them because there is no technical argument for why we haven’t adopted the Système Internationale – our refusal is based on emotion and familiarity.
Our choice of unit system is perhaps more important now than in recent years. Science is conducted using the language of SI units. If we want to have a scientifically literate populace, we should make sure that scientists and non-scientists speak the same language. In terms of national competitiveness, Americans are competing on a global market of information now more than ever. We are at a disadvantage by not speaking the international language of science at a time when we are struggling with truly global issues like climate change and resource depletion.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology, the government arm that sets standards and measurements to support American competitiveness, concludes that “the current effort toward national metrification is based on the conclusion that industrial and commercial productivity, mathematics and science education, and the competitiveness of American products and services in world markets, will be enhanced by completing the change to the metric system of units. Failure to complete the change will increasingly handicap the Nation’s industry and economy.”
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When I lived in England, the locals had a word for that type of Brit. They called them yobs.
True metrics (ala ‘system’) were designed by lazy scientists and aficionados that thought it would be neat to only have to worry about things in tens, hundreds, etc. Screw them...I never bought a deciliter of anything - never will.
Half agree with you. I started out as a industrial chemist, and For Science!, SI is the thing (looking at 50 year old reagent formulae (grains/pint) convinced me of that)
Then I moved out to the plant and found metric units came in two sizes - too large and too snall), and the Imperial/Engineering was just right - everything industrial can be measured in feet or inches.
And it's not the decimalization, that's good. We calculated everything in ft, sq ft, cu ft, lbs, multiplied by appropriate powers of 10.
Of the top of my head 31,000lb. fresh, 32,000 salt. (That wasn't hard.) For greater precision, I'd need the temperature and have to look stuff up, and use a caluculator - but I'd have to do that in French units too.
Funny that the Middle Eastern countries aren’t red. They measure oil on barrels, where a barrel = 31 gallons.
The stubborn refusal to trash the useless Pagan Earth worshippers’ metric system is a huge black eye for America.
The metric system is a laughable joke in every respect.
Do not ever forget the folly of the first Mars landing crashing because of having to be politically correct, and convert the calculations to the metric system.
WE landed on the moon with the US system nicely, but look at the disaster that metrics has been since.
China still uses the Wentworth system that the British gave them 100 years ago.
The foot, inch system was Hebrew in origin, and is the oldist surviving measurement system.
And 988 is not a power of Ten, no matter where you stick the decimal point.
Whitworth
OK I’ll bite. 988?
Not This Sh*t Again!
I spent forty years working for a manufacturer of hydraulic pumps and control valves. I was in product design and development. Over time it became apparent that it didn't make a bit of difference which system we used. Our measuring equipment could reliably read to 50 millionths of an inch, push a button and the reading switched to millimeters. The CNC machines were programed in P code and the industrial engineers could handle either system when programing the cutter path. Stand alone machines allowed a machinist to to mechanically shift back and forth as easily as you could shift gears in a stick shift auto. I was the manager of our CAD/CAM system for some fifteen years and we routinely made 3D solid models of our parts and then rendered them as 2D machining drawings with English dimensions for our shop and metric for our foreign subsidiaries.
Metric has made great noise about it's simplicity because all measures are related by powers of ten. BFD! Angles are measured in degrees (360/revolution), minutes (60/degree) and seconds (60/minute) in both systems because not everything in nature works smoothly when measured by decades. Same goes for time intervals (& second, third, and fourth derivatives). As for angular measure in Radians or Grads, don't even bring them up.
Physicists may measure Angstroms per Picosecond and they are just as guilty of using bastardized units as those of us in the inch/pound/second camp. American industry was busily making "modular metric" products and no one noticed because it doesn't make any difference. The American consumer doesn't care how things are measured, his only concerns are how much does it cost, how long will it last, can I take it to a dealer and get parts.
There are some serious disadvantages to the Metric system, one being the measurement of pressure (force per unit area). One measure is Pascalls where one Pascall is 1.450377×10−4 psi which is ridiculously small, the other is the Bar which is 14.50377 psi, a rather large unit but still slightly smaller than a standard atmosphere.
Regards,
GtG
See my #89.
Actually, it started in the Ford administration.
Amen. America is not like the other nations. Different from conception and birth. The rest of the nations don't like her or that other obvious oddball on the planet, Israel.
The rest of the world doesn't want to succeed by emulating hard work, achievement, generosity, mercy, the rule of law etc. They want to succeed by corrupting and destroying those fundamentals, thereby eliminating the true success stories that make them look bad. We are almost there, what with the 0bamanation of desolation in all out assault mode.
The universal coefficient of the metric system relating it to the real world of physics.
Indeed!
Even worse—10 pastries for the price of a baker’s dozen!
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